“Star Wars: The Force Awakens” hurtled toward $125 million in USA and Canadian ticket sales on Friday and a potential record-breaking $225 million through Sunday, giving the long-awaited movie a shot at the biggest opening weekend of all time.
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The Walt Disney Co. on Saturday said the film made an estimated $120.5 million from Thursday night previews and opening day Friday.
And it looks like his gamble paid off because the film – which is the seventh from its franchise and stars Harrison Ford and Londerer newcomers Daisy Ridley and John Boyega – took £9.6m at the box office in its first day alone. The latest “Star Wars” is playing in 4,134 North American theaters, the widest December release ever.
That includes a chart-topping $57 million from fans who flocked to see the first showings on Thursday night.
The Force Awakens, which has had its legions of fans frothing at the mouth ever since its mooted release, has grossed at least US$130 million (RM 557 million) worldwide since it opened overseas on Wednesday, setting records in Britain, Germany, Norway and Sweden. White House spokesman Josh Earnest also got into the spirit, posing for pictures with R2-D2 and two Stormtroopers in the press briefing room.
But this may just be the beginning of the film’s box office empire with movie choices in January and February pretty depleted at the cineplex. Disney bought “Star Wars” producer Lucasfilm for $4 billion in 2012 and spent more than $200 million to produce “Force Awakens”.
Nomura Securities analyst Anthony DiClemente, who rates Disney a “buy”, said he was more confident after seeing the movie that it could become the top-grossing film of all time. Whether “The Force Awakens” can come close to the global hauls of those films ($2.8 billion for “Avatar” and $2.2 billion for “Titanic“) won’t be clear for weeks.
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Star Wars fans voiced their anger after a faulty projector virtually ruined the ending of new film The Force Awaken at a cinema in the US. The movie scored a 95 percent positive rating on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes.
